


Of Farmland And Open Sky

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Charming Family Feels, Daddy!Charming, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 05:17:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snow is bleeding out, and the Curse is coming, and the wardrobe can take only two. AU where Charming takes Emma into our world, and has to raise her until she can break the curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Farmland And Open Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Another instance of 'oh it'll be a oneshot' proving to be a lie. That said, I became overwhelmed by daddy!Charming feels, so there you go.

Snow was losing blood.

She was screaming, but her screams were quieter, more whimpering and weak by the second. Emma lay in David’s arms, crying as quietly as her mother, losing more and more blood by the second, the sheets soaked red.

The baby was alive, David reminded himself, healthy and crying a little. Emma. The baby’s name was Emma: that was what Snow said, right?

“She’s going to pass out,” Doc said, from the other side of the bed. “If she sleeps we can try to stop the bleeding, with any luck. Otherwise-“

“There’s no time for otherwise,” David interrupted, trying to push Snow to the back of his mind, a place she had never resided before, and focus on the here and now. The curse was coming, the wardrobe was ready, and it could carry two people. Snow and Emma. They were supposed to go together.

But now Snow was unconscious on the stained bedclothes, and while she was still breathing, the dwarf and his assistants were moving too urgently for David to keep hope. The curse was coming, within minutes, and someone had to be able to save them. It was what Snow would have wanted. It was what she would want again, once she awoke.

If she awoke.

David shook his head, and yelled, “Save her, no matter what you have to do!” as if it were necessary. The dwarves nodded, solemnly, and David made a break for the door.

The wardrobe was in sight when the soldiers came. The tears made it hard for David to see to fight, but there was nothing for it. With or without Snow, he and Emma had to make it. Emma had to make it. David didn’t care at all for Queens or curses or the end of the world, not here and now. The baby in his arms was his daughter and she would survive. She would grow into a strong, brilliant woman, a woman as beautiful and as amazing as her mother. She would save the world one day, from a curse or a dragon or simply from itself, but save it she would.

She was the daughter of true love, and of Snow White, and David didn’t know which was more powerful but neither did he care. She was also his. His daughter, his child, his to care for and his to protect.

The soldiers lay dead at his feet, and although he was losing more and more blood - not as much as Snow, though, and he couldn’t hear her screaming nor the dwarves victory in saving her in the empty corridor - Emma was unscathed. Her mother was bleeding out and her father wounded in the shoulder, but Emma’s perfect baby’s skin remained unblemished, and her cries were no less strong.

David heard a sound down the next hallway, more soldiers and their Queen.

He wanted desperately go back and sit with Snow, but Snow didn’t need him now. What Snow needed now was a miracle, or medicine, or maybe the curse to save her. Her husband could do nothing but love her, and childbirth was not a curse but a blessing. What kiss could save her, if that had killed her? What could he do now but save what she would have willingly died to protect?

It took everything he was, but David looked not down the corridor where the darkness fast approached, nor up the one behind him, where somewhere his wife bled and her friends scurried to save her.

David looked right down at the wardrobe, and dove inside it without a second thought. It was a tight fit, and his shoulders almost kept the doors from closing, but he kept Emma in the crook between his bent knees and his torso, and slammed the doors tight.

\---

The fit was less tight inside of a tree.

And a tree was where they found themselves, not a moment later. Someplace where there was sunlight and birdsong, and no curse, no Queen, and no dying wife.

No, not dying, he had to remind himself. Hurt but not dying. And if the Curse hit in time, she’d be saved by that.

It was odd to hope that Regina’s triumph would save Snow’s life, but hope was all he had left. He’d be left hoping for twenty eight years.

His arm throbbed, and he saw the blood trickling from the stab wound with a blink of surprise. But Emma’s eyes were wide, blue, and looking right up at him. She wasn’t crying anymore, stunned into apparent silence by inter-dimensional magic, or by battle perhaps. One or the other, and his daughter would face both again someday, if he played his part right.

“Well, Emma,” he said, smiling with all the bravery he had down at his child, “guess it’s just you and me now, eh? Until we find mama again. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?” he felt a tear, and then two, slide down his cheeks. His hands were full of Emma, and he couldn’t wipe them away. “You’ll find mama for me.”

Emma blinked, after a moment, and David thought that likely all the agreement he’d get.

He looked around. He knew forests, knew them as a farmer’s son, and as a soldier, and then as the prince and landowner. He didn’t know this forest in particular, but he thought that likely would go for everything else in this world, also.

He picked a direction - South, by the sun - and started walking.

—

The taverns in this world were, at least, similar to those he knew from the Enchanted Forest. He stepped in with his baby in his arms, and people stepped aside as he strode to the counter.

“Hey, sugar,” the woman behind the bar wore clothes tighter than David had known women at home to wear, but she had the same careworn look of barmaid and innkeeper that rang familiar. “You can’t bring your kid in here, I’m sorry, it’s not safe for a baby.”

“I’m sorry,” David didn’t have to work to look lost and confused, “I ah… I hit my head,” he blinked, “Where am I?”

He’d worked on this story as he walked, a game he’d learned in war to keep his mind from the pain in his shoulder, the sickening worry for Snow, the fear of having his daughter in his arms and no way of protecting her from the world around them. He had been in some sort of accident - what had happened hardly mattered, and he didn’t know what a passable story would even sound like in this strange land - and hit his head, hard enough to disorient and lose his memory. He’d remember his daughter, a lost wife, and little else. He’d known men who’d fought in their armies to get a blow to the head and lose even their own names to the injury: surely the same would work here.

If not, he was lost. But he’d kill and die before they took Emma from him.

She gave him an odd look, half suspicion and half concern, “Outskirts of Augusta, Maine,” she said. “What happened, d’you remember?”

“No,” David shook his head, “My daughter and I… we lost her mom, and we were… I don’t remember…” he succumbed to the pain in his shoulder willingly, and let the man beside him help him into one of the low leather booths by the windows. He clutched Emma tightly in his good arm. 

“Anyone in here a doctor?” the woman called, and was met with a number of shaken heads and mumbles. “Ah, damn it,” she cursed, then looked back at him, “Wait here, sugar, I’ll all an ambulance.”

—

“What is your name?”

“David… Shepherd,” David replied, slowly, testing out the name in the format this land seems to use. He was lucky that someone gave him a newspaper to read - “Might jog your memory, buddy,” - and he had soaked up at least that. They would be David and Emma Shepherd. That was a start.

“Alright, and the baby?”

“My daughter, Emma,” he said, holding her a little closer. Anything they do will only prove she is his daughter, he thinks desperately, there’s nothing they can do to take her. He will kill any man who tries.

“And her mom?”

“She’s… she’s gone,” he said. “The last I remember she was… she’s gone.”

“How long ago was that?”

“We were leaving her when whatever… happened, happened.”

“You remember anything else?”

“No sir,” David looked the man - doctor, like at home, only in a white coat and in some sort of very white medical facility. He was trying to not feel ill with culture shock, but it was difficult. At least they gave him something - injection, and yes, Doc mentioned something similar once, didn’t he? - for the pain.

“Alright, who’s the president?”

“Who?”

The man frowned, “The President of the United States, who is he?”

“Leader…” David tried, “…of this land?”

“Hm,” the man nodded, “What year is it?”

“I don’t know,” David didn’t even try to fake that one, he’d no idea how time is even measured in this new land, let alone what year he’d found himself in.

“You must have hit your head very hard,” the paramedic said, with sympathy. “I’m sorry, sir, you’ll need to stay here for observation for a few days, until you’re well enough to be discharged. You got anyone we can call?”

“No,” David said, defeatedly, “No one. No one at all.”

“I’m sorry,” the man repeated, softly. “We’ll have to take your daughter into the post-natal unit, for a few days, as well. How old is she?”

“She’s only a few days,” David said, “her mom died in the birth, and we got stuck… a long way from anyone who could help. I think anyway, the memory’s so fuzzy…” Quick thinking was, sadly, never David’s strongest suit, but if he was to raise Emma in a land he’d never heard of before yesterday he had a feeling that would have to change.

“We’ll get the police out looking for her,” the man promised. David didn’t bother telling him they’d never find anything. Not for twenty-eight more years. “I’m very sorry to ask this, sir, but could we please take a blood sample? And one from your child? The police are going to want to make sure she’s actually-“

“Mine,” David nodded, knowing there was no sense in refusing. Let them work whatever magic they must, whatever science they used in this world. Emma was his, he had no doubt of that. The sooner they had documents and such to prove it, the better. “I understand. Do what you have to.”

“Thank you,” the man nodded, and David tried not to wince when a kindly-looking woman - a nurse, Nurse Watson, she was introduced - took Emma from his arm. Struggling would start a fight, and he wasn’t strong enough yet for that. Sometime soon perhaps he’d have to, but for now he needed rest, and Emma needed someone who could keep her comfortable and feed her. 

He watched Emma being taken away, and felt another ‘injection’ as they drew out some of his blood. He tried not to panic - he’d lost so much already, what was one more vial - and tried to remember the words the Blue Fairy had used. ‘A land without magic’. Blood magic could not be used here, then. He shouldn’t be so afraid of them having some of his.

But he was. Culture shock set in quickly, with Emma gone and whatever medicine they’d given him making him drowsy, and he found himself incapable of clinging to his composure any longer.

It was a relief, when they took his muddied, bloodied clothes to be laundered, and gave him strange, soft, baggy pyjamas and a bed in a dark ward. He closes his eyes, and tried not to think of Snow, of Emma, of everyone he loved being so very, very far away. He tried not to think of the world of new dangers beyond this bed, or of how very difficult the next three decades would be.

Rumpelstiltskin had said that it was destiny, that Emma would break the Curse.

That was all the comfort David had, and he clung to it with both hands. She would grow, she would survive, she would make it home to Snow. Anything else - his own fate, true love, vengeance, their lost world - none of it mattered so long as that one fact was true. Emma would live, Emma would make it, Emma would save everyone else.

He closed his eyes, and all he could see was his mother’s careworn face, still fresh even though it had been near on two years since her passing. Everything else, all that other pain, seemed distant. David thought he was likely in shock, he’d certainly known men to fall to that before, and this was hardly an ordinary day. This was the worst day of his life, his wife perhaps dead, his daughter taken out of his sight, his entire world ended around his ears. And all he could think was that he’d never stand by Ruth’s grave again. Her farm, her lands, everything she’d grown and cherished all her life, all of it was gone. His home was gone.

David was just a farm boy, not a soldier, not a prince, not a saviour of worlds. Just a farm boy, a shepherd, nothing more. And this was more than any shepherd had been raised to handle.

Tears slipped down his cheeks as he slid into sleep. He didn’t care where they fell.

—

Emma was returned quickly, and David thanked God for that. They ran their test, with the consent he’d given, and the nurse had a relieved smile on her face when she handed the baby back to her father. “We had to be safe,” she said, apologetically, “but between you and me, I’m glad it came out right.”

David nodded, with a grateful smile, “I understand, there are many liars in this world.”

And the last, and likely the next. The nurse just smiled, not understanding anything past the obvious, and David realised something more: he’d have to be the clever one this time. There was no Snow to be his conscience, no Rumpelstiltskin to show up at the last moment and make a lifesaving deal, no advisers or fairies to tell him how best to proceed. Here he’d have to be all of them, because he doubted anyone would help for no reason.

There were no alliances in this world, no good versus evil. He’d gleaned that just from reading the ‘newspapers’ that the nurses had brought this morning. He saw no mention of anything he understood, and so only sought the answers to the questions they’d asked too often last night.

The President was a man named Ronald Reagan, the date was October 23, 1983. He felt so helpless, so useless, knowing this information without understanding it. Without understanding a moment of what he would face, upon leaving the hospital.

But he had an equally horrible feeling that, were he to betray this ignorance, they would take Emma away. They’d deem him unfit to be her father, and place her with some other family, someone who understood all that was written in that damned newspaper and knew how this world worked with the eyes of a native.

He’d learn fast. He’d been a shepherd all his life, and within six months he had become princely enough to fool anyone who saw him. Learning battle, royalty, politics, had been a challenge, and he’d succeeded well enough that Snow had been surprised beyond belief when he told her the truth. A princess of the blood, and she’d not known the difference.

He couldn’t let them take Emma, he just couldn’t. If he lost her now, in a world he’d never seen before, then how would he ever find her again?

“How is your head feeling, Mr Shepherd?” the nurse asked next, and he feigned a frown.

“A little better. Still have no idea how I got here.”

“Concussion can do that,” she agreed, “it should pass in time. I was told there’s no one we can call for you?”

“That’s right,” he agreed, “everyone else is… gone. It’s just us.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, with deep sympathy. He nodded his thanks. “We’ll be keeping you in for observation for a few days, until you’ve passed a psych and physical test, since you have no one to keep an eye on you if we discharge you sooner.”

“I understand,” he said, gleaning from that that he’d be questioned and perhaps examined some more, and he had a few nights to go in this bed, “Thank you. What about Emma?”

“I’ll need to be taking her back down to the care unit soon,” she said, regretfully, “she got very cold, colder than she should have, and the doctor wants to keep an eye on her breathing. She seems perfectly healthy, though, aside from those concerns. She’s lucky that whatever happened to you didn’t hurt her, too.”

“I can be pretty protective,” David said, smiling down at his daughter. She’d wrapped her tiny fingers around his thumb, and opened her eyes. Blue eyes, and he wondered if they’d turn green like Snow’s or remain blue like his mother’s. He’d not known her two days, but he knew that if anything happened to the baby girl in his arms, he’d die.

“We’ll do our best to discharge you together, Mr Shepherd,” she promised, and he recognised the soft smile on her face. He wondered if Red and Granny would have looked like that, watching him with his daughter. 

He felt an unwelcome tug in his chest, next to the bleeding wound that was Snow. He’d not see his friends for thirty years. They’d not even remember him

“Thank you.” She nodded, and left them together for a moment.

At least he had Emma. He clung on tighter, and whispered that promise into her downy blonde hair: they’d stay together, and he’d keep her safe, and they’d find their family again someday. 

—

Their first home was the hospital, for a week or more, David lost count. Their second was a tiny back bedroom beside a little grocery shop, in what David was gathering was the poorer part of an already impoverished little town.

Joanne, the nurse who’d looked after Emma, said she was overstepping her place to help him. But he’d smiled at her some more, and let Emma do the same, and she’d almost melted then and there. David had never been a manipulative man, but he’d learned fast from George and from Rumpelstiltskin, even from Regina. Here there was no higher standard, no good to live up to, no princess to be worthy of. Here there was just him and Emma, and they’d not make it by being honourable all the time.

She knew a woman who had a spare room, and who could put them up until they found somewhere better. She needed someone to keep an eye on her, and to take over in her shop, if she’d let him. Joanne worried, apparently.

The woman who owned the house also ran the store downstairs. She was crotchety and disagreeable at first, and apparently were it not for some debt she owed Joanne she’d not open her door to anyone. Certainly not strange men with babies in tow. She made sure he was aware of that, and he nodded his understanding.

He left on the third day they were there to look for work. Mrs Fillmore said she’d watch Emma if he agreed to take a look at her drains, and he agreed. He’d understood the plumbing in the castle - had Grumpy show him how it worked and everything - and this looked little different. He needed her on side, and needed someone who could watch Emma while he hunted for their future. 

He returned home with three newspapers, some forms from the job centre, and a head full of confusion and fear at the world he’d encountered. The horseless carriages that barreled down the smooth roads were very strange, but he understood that he’d need to learn to handle one soon. He’d managed to sell his sword in a shop for a large fistful of green bills, two hundred dollars the man had said. With that he’d bought some clothing that looked roughly Emma’s size, as well as some children’s books - for himself, mostly, not for her just yet, as he needed to learn this world and fast - and a few more sets of clothing for himself, as well.

He found women more agreeable than men, in terms of bending the rules to be helpful. He felt a little sick, flirting with women who were not Snow, while Snow herself was cursed or dead or both. But he found that smiling, playing the prince, lead to his meagre money going further. And so smile he did.

He had a hundred dollars left by the time he made it back to Mrs Fillmore’s. He found the grumpy old woman sat on her sofa, holding Emma on her lap and singing a song. Emma was asleep, the song some kind of lullaby. Mrs Fillmore looked softer and sweeter than David had thought possible.

“You girls have a nice day, then?” he asked, trying to sound casual and not desperately hopeful that they had. Mrs Fillmore gave him a look that attempted her usual disapproval, but came out still as soft as it’d been looking at Emma.

“You have a sweet child here, I’ll give you that,” she said, gruffly.

David nodded, “Yes, I do. I’d have nothing if I didn’t have her.”

And he knew, right then, that it’d be true even if he were still a prince, even if the world were as it was and Snow was alive and well, and he had everything back that he’d lost when the Curse hit. Without Emma, he’d still have nothing.

They didn’t discuss it again, not when David successfully fixed the pipes - a manual on Mrs Fillmore’s top shelf and some common sense did the trick - nor when he found her singing to Emma again as he did it. Not when their week’s grace period ran out, or the next week’s, or the next. She didn’t kick them out, and he made no move to leave. For where else had they to go?

And at night, he lay down on the creaking bed with Emma beside him, and stroked the downy blonde hair on the top of her head. “I’ll get her a better home, Snow,” he promised, every night because he needed her more than anything, and talking to her summoned her, it seemed, somehow. “I will, you’ll be proud of us. I’ll look after our daughter. You don’t have to worry.”

—

Within two weeks, Mrs Fillmore had David helping in the shop. She was too old to stand behind the counter, she said, and if he was to stay he’d earn his keep.

Mrs Fillmore had become a good friend, in her own way, and hadn’t chased them out with a broom, at least. They ate meals in her cramped little kitchen, she showed him what to buy for a baby girl, and between them they kept Emma clean, fed, and happy. In return, he did all the odd jobs she needed doing, and worked long days in her store, and ran all the errands she, aging into her 70s and getting creakier by the day, could no longer manage. She only paid him a little, enough to buy some food and Emma the bare essentials, but it was a far cry from a street corner, from utter poverty.

He found himself unable to think of how badly things might have gone, had they not met Joanne in the hospital, or had she not taken pity on him. Had her grandmother’s friend not owed her a favour, and needed someone to help her in the shop. He’d struck so lucky that he didn’t know how to not worry it’d be taken at any moment.

There was so much he didn’t know, so much he couldn’t have known about any of what he now faced, and having an ally - even one as grumpy as old Mrs Fillmore - meant the world.

David spent his days searching for any other, better work that would take him, and getting nowhere. He didn’t know the first thing about driving a car, about machinery, about any of the things Mrs Fillmore impatiently but thoroughly explained to him. He knew sword craft, farming, livestock, and rudimentary battle strategy. Unless South-Western Maine had a dragon that needed slaying, he thought his skills a little limited.

They couldn’t live in Mrs Fillmore’s back bedroom forever, after all, and she was starting to talk about selling the shop and going into a sheltered home. For all he had no doubt she was fond of Emma, and even of him to an extent, David had no illusions of permanence. 

It was four months before David’s search for real work got anywhere. He memorised the date, wrote it in the little notepad he’d found in a cupboard and claimed as a diary of sorts: January 14th, 1984.

The girl in the newsagent’s down the road, Louise, as she’d introduced herself a few weeks back, all bleached hair and bright nail polish, struck up a conversation one morning. “Hey, not for nothing, but I have a friend in upstate New York who needs help on her farm. I’ve seen you circling those kinda jobs, y’know, and she’s hiring.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, says she needs new workers to help bring with the planting in spring, since so many have gone off recently. I thought it’d be up your alley, right?”

“Right, I- thank you,” David beamed at her, and she blushed.

“Don’t mention it, and ’s not for you either. It’s for your kid, the baby Mrs F brought in here the other day. That’s your girl, right? She needs more than Mrs F’s back bedroom, y’know what I mean?”

“I know,” David nodded, “thank you so much. If you give me the number I’ll call right away.”

She scribbled it down in bright pink ink on a little slip of paper, and handed it over with a bright smile. “There you go. Good luck, Dave.”

He nodded his thanks, and made to leave. He called the farm that same day, and was asked to come and meet with Louisa’s friend and her husband in three days.

“You what?” Mrs Fillmore held Emma a little closer, “A job?”

“Yeah,” David grinned, so much relief felt like it’d break him. It was the first real good luck he’d had since Joanne said she could get him a room, and it felt so much like the first step toward making an actual life for them. “Well, with any luck.”

“Do they know you’re cracked in the head?” she asked, bluntly. David laughed.

“No, I don’t think so. I’m hoping to hide that part.”

She snorted, “Yeah good luck with that. No offense, son, but your brain’s stuck in the 1930s. One look at a combine harvester and you’ll lose what little sense you have.”

He just laughed, and leaned in to hug her. She made a surprised little noise, but hugged him back with her free arm. “You come back and visit me when you can,” she made him promise, “and bring Emma. Little one’ll need a good influence.”

He laughed again, and found he was close to tears. One day, he thought, he’d find a friend and a family he didn’t have to leave.

—

Mrs Fillmore drove them down to the farm the next day. Louisa’s friends were the Peterson family, a man and wife named Carole and John, friends of her mother it seemed. Their farm lay just outside of a place named Johnstown, and David had to admit he felt better, more at peace, when Mrs Fillmore’s car had left the oddly ordered streets of the town, and had entered into open countryside. It was comforting to know that towns and people and technology could be so alien, but that rolling hills and forestland remained the same.

The journey took almost six hours, and David was glad that he’d thought to pack enough milk for Emma. Between bottled milk - ‘formula’ as the kindly woman in the shop had called it - and diapers, and the whole bag of equipment Mrs Fillmore had helped him to collect, Emma needed a lot of things to keep her happy. David was more than happy to oblige: nothing mattered in this world but her. Nothing at all.

He held her in his lap most of the way, needing the comfort of her solid little weight in his arms. She’d grown used to sleeping there - for all this land’s ideas, prams and car seats and cots, David liked to hold his daughter whenever and for as long as he could - and spent most of the time cuddled into his chest, one little fist curled toward her mouth.

Around Albany she started to cry, and they had to pull over to change and feed her. Mrs Fillmore, not for the first time, refused to help David with this task: he was her parent, she said, it was his job to do this right. 

He was lucky, she said, that Emma was such a quiet child. She thought that if he had a screamer on his hands, he’d be lost.

David himself wondered about that. Emma had cried lustily all the way through the castle, and had only quietened once they’d gone through the portal. He had to wonder if he’d managed to traumatise her, change her somehow, since she’d been not half an hour old when she’d been ripped through time and space. He hoped not. 

—

“So, Mr Shepherd,” John Peterson smiled, friendly and open, “Tell me about yourself.

The smile and tone were clearly designed to set him at his ease, but David wasn’t to be lulled into a sense of camaraderie just yet. He was painfully aware of the hundred reasons why he was a poor candidate for this job, and it would take more skill than he thought he possessed to hide them all. He was ashamed of the disappointment he’d felt when John explained that Carole didn’t help much with the interviewing, but he couldn’t help it: women had always been more accommodating to him, in this world and the last, than men.

Before he’d done little to encourage that; now he reluctantly treated it as the useful gift that it was. 

“Not much to tell, really,” David said, glad now that Mrs Fillmore had drilled him - quietly, so as not to wake Emma - on everything he was to say. “I ah, was born and raised on a small farm in New Hampshire, but we didn’t have much in the way of machines up there. I don’t know, I’m just a simple country guy, really, looking for a job.”

John’s smile turned a little more genuine when David’s grew to match it, which was a relief: he hadn’t messed up yet, apparently.

“Louise said you have a child?”

“Yes,” David couldn’t help but smile, talking about Emma: she was easily his favourite topic of conversation. “I have a daughter, Emma. She’s two months old.”

“And your wife…“

“Is dead,” he said, a little softer, trying still to get used to the words. Dead, cursed, it mattered little when either way she was so far away, twenty-eight years and all that magic lost between them. “She died in childbirth.”

“Oh,” John’s face fell with sympathy, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, I ah, I couldn’t stay in Maine anymore, not after that. I need a fresh start, you know, and I know farms.”

“Do you know where you’d be living, if you accepted the job?” John asked, and David felt his heart lift: that sounded hopeful, like it was a real possibility.

“No, no one mentioned it.”

“There’re some small houses down the road from here, we own the land so they’re let at a good price and most of the guys and their families live down there. Most of them have us just take rent out of their pay check.”

“Sounds great,” David couldn’t believe it: a house for Emma, where she could grow up, where they’d have their own space and be comfortable was more than he could have hoped for. 

“We can train you on the machinery, what we really need are staff who’re experienced with animals, which you said on the phone you are.”

“Yeah, sheep and horses mostly, and we had cows for a few years,” before the fifth ogre war, and father’s summons to the front lines. Before the news of his death, and how fast everything went to hell soon after, and affording more than a few sheep and a lame horse to feed became a pipe dream.

“We have sheep, pigs, cows, and a few horses we let out to tourists and riding schools on the farm,” John said, and David felt a little glow of satisfaction: that, at least, he could do. “Now, let’s talk pay scale…”

The conversation continued on that way, John discussing the intricacies of employment and David nodding along, pretending to understand it all. He thought this meant he had a job, it sounded that way at least. That alone gave him cause to smile.

He’d had nightmares, more nights than not, about them living rough on the streets like beggars, about tiny, cramped rooms and dirty clothing, and Emma’s high, needy cry, underfed and brittle as bone. Someone was watching over them, or Emma’s fate to save their family was protecting them, something must have inspired this good fortune. David winged a little prayer heavenward in thanks, not sure who might be listening but thankful all the same.

“So, if all that sounds right to you, we’re happy to give you a shot,” John held out his hand, and David grasped it, shaking it firmly. “Welcome aboard.”

—

Their second home was a little room in an inn in town, where Mrs Fillmore paid their bill - and didn’t look him in the eye while doing it, and said it was for Emma, always for Emma - before departing. David sat with his daughter on his lap late into the night, while he read everything he could find about modern farming, about the world around him, anything he could get his hands on to maintain his facade of belonging here. 

It was exhausting, working all day trying to impress and not arouse suspicion, and then reading until the wee small hours until he could be up again at dawn. Carole Peterson, at least, was willing to look after Emma: apparently it wasn’t just John who felt sympathy for a man so recently bereaved.

The other farmhands were nice guys, not unlike their counterparts in the Enchanted Forest, and David found that the common topics, like work and women, were enough to bond them, even if he didn’t know what in the world the Red Sox were, or why Jarvis, who worked the massive ‘combine harvester’ was so enamoured with them.

Being apart from Emma all day made it hard to concentrate, but it was worth it to earn some money and build a life for them. 

For the first time in a long, long time, David could shut off from the pain in his heart and the worries that clogged his head, and just work on the task at hand. He hoped, against hope, that this was as far as they’d have to travel, that they’d reached sanctuary at last.

—

Their third home was theirs for a long time: 13 Abbot Lane, just off of Main Street in the tiny little town, Clayton, that served the local farms.

It was a few weeks of training and probation before David was trusted as a full member of the farm crew, and they felt secure enough in his abilities to find him a little house to call his home. 

He was reeling when John told him, a mix of elation and utter disbelief. He’d done it, somehow: he had a job, a home, and a little bit of stability. The day he was given the keys, and Carole - who turned out to be a thin, firm, but smiling woman with warm eyes - handed Emma back to him, and left them in peace, was the best day since his wedding to Snow.

“Look, Emma,” he said to the three-month-old now staring around yet another new home. “We’re home, for now, what d’you think?”

Emma gurgled, and waved her pudgy little hands. At nearly six months, she was growing strong, already much bigger and sturdier than the bird-thin little thing she’d been when they first came through the tree.

David himself felt decades older than he had been then. He wasn’t sure the change was for the better.

“This is the living room,” he turned her so she could see the little sofa, the meager stack of books, bits and pieces Jarvis and Ray had helped him to assemble with his first pay check from Goodwill. “You’ll learn to walk here, and we’ll read stories together,” he walked her into the tiny kitchen, “And here we’ll bake cakes on your birthday, and I’ll make your lunch when you go to school…” he took them then up the stairs, along the landing, and into the tiny, empty back bedroom. “This’ll be yours, Emma,” he promised, “We’ll paint it green, that’s your mom’s favourite colour, and you’ll be happy here. I promise.”

He sighed, and looked down at her as he walked into his own bedroom, where an elderly-looking bed and a second hand cradle rested, covered in new, clean sheets and blankets. “But for now, your dad is weak, and needs you here. You don’t mind keeping an old man company, right?”

He tickled her stomach, and she giggled, waving her hands and legs. He laughed with her, and sat down on the side of the bed, putting her down on the blankets and blowing a raspberry on her bare stomach. She giggled harder, her laughter like sunshine, bright and gleaming gold as the blonde hair that covered the top of her fragile head. She’d have curls to rival her mother’s one day, he thought, blonde like his father, with eyes that had settled to green that matched Snow’s.

“We’re home, Emma,” he repeated, and she grabbed onto the finger he offered her to hold. “We made it.”


End file.
